... year-old maidenhair tree southeast of Beijing, China, to hear the tree make a coughing sound at night. According to the Beijing Evening News, the tree makes the unusual sound several times during the night and resembles an old man coughing. "The tree is nearly 83 feet (25 m) high and nearly 50 feet (15 m) in circumference and is regarded as a living fossil. As many as 1,000 people at a time have visited the tree to witness the phenomenon since it was first reported April 5th. Speculation abounds as to what causes the coughing sound at night, but no reasonable explanation has yet been presented." (Anonymous; "Coughing Tree Attracts Hundreds," World Explorer , 1:6 , no. 8, 1996) Synchronicity and ... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Biology Lite A coughing tree "The New Zealand Herald reported that hundreds of people are flocking off to a 3,400-year-old maidenhair tree southeast of Beijing, China, to hear the tree make a coughing sound at night. According to the Beijing Evening News, the tree makes the unusual sound several times during the night and resembles an old man coughing. "The tree is nearly 83 feet (25 m) high and nearly 50 feet (15 m) in circumference and is regarded as a living fossil. As many as 1,000 people at a time have visited the tree to witness the phenomenon since it ...

... Than Flying Birds? BBC6 Did Australian Songbirds Evolve Earlier than European Songbirds? BBC7 Are Birds More Closely Related to Mammals Than to Reptiles? BBC8 The Inability of Some Birds to Synthesize Ascorbic Acid BBD DISTRIBUTION OF BIRDS IN SPACE AND TIME BBD1 Discontinuous Populations of Birds BBD2 Uncolonized Areas: Unfilled Niches BBD3 Land Birds Observed Far at Sea BBD4 Late Survival of Moas and Passenger Pigeons BBD5 Distribution Curiosities BBE THE FOSSIL RECORD OF BIRDS BBE1 The Fossil Record of Birds and Associated Paradigms BBE2 Evidence against the Dinosaur Origin of Birds BBE3 Protoavis: A Pre-Archaeopteryx Bird? BBE4 Unresolved Nature of Archaeopteryx BBE5 The Apparent Absence of Transitional Forms of Feathers BBE6 Fossils of Ostrich Ancestors in the Northern Hemisphere BBE7 Controversial Feathers of the London Archaeopteryx Fossil BBE8 Giant Fossil Eggs BBF BODILY FUNCTIONS BBF1 The Avian Respiratory System: Unique ... Have Two Penises Changing Color to Control Temperature Spines to Condense Moisture Frogs with Pouches for Young Incubator Structures on Toads Chameleon Tongues Longer Than Bodies Riddle of the Basilisk BRB BEHAVIOR Snakes Swallowing Young Frogs Swallowing Young Frogs "Appreciating" Music Arboreal Salamanders Frogs Croaking in Unison Lizards Running on Water Pair-Bonding in Frogs Unusual Copulation Technique in Iguanas Snake Balls Frog Battles Turtles Stomping for Worms Lizards Rain Down from Trees Unusual Lizard Courtship Lizards Mimicking Insects Fabled Snakes (Hoop and Milk Snakes) Iguana Sociality Toad Handedness Death Feints Frog Cocoons Chicken-Eating Frogs Snake Maternal Impressions Decapitated Snakes Dangerous Flying Reptiles [BRA] "Vagabond" Female Green Turtles Tuataras Copulate Like Birds Horned Toads Squirt Blood Cannibalism in the Womb in Salamanders Snake Odor-Warfare Evolution of Instincts BRC BIOCHEMICAL PHENOMENA Snakes Produce Antivenins Effective against Many Different ...

... those exquisitely designed feathers, so modern in appearance, tilted the scales. The consensus of the Conference was that Archaeopteryx could indeed fly. (Howgate, Michael E.; "Back to the Trees for Archaeopteryx in Bavaria," Nature, 313:435, 1985.) The really interesting part of the continuing Archaeopteryx saga comes from the recent charge of Fred Hoyle and others that the Archaeopteryx fossil is an outright forgery. Hoyle et al insist that Archaeopteryx could not have flown at all, given its bones and musculature. Archaeopteryx looks like a reptile and was a reptile. As for the modern-looking feathers, they were probably added to the fossil fraudulently. And there do seem to be parts of the fossils on display in London and East Berlin that look highly suspicious. Conventional ... birds. Archaeopteryx could not have raised its wings above the horizontal, making it a poor flier at best. It also lacked the birds' keel bone to which the wing muscles are anchored. But those exquisitely designed feathers, so modern in appearance, tilted the scales. The consensus of the Conference was that Archaeopteryx could indeed fly. (Howgate, Michael E.; "Back to the Trees for Archaeopteryx in Bavaria," Nature, 313:435, 1985.) The really interesting part of the continuing Archaeopteryx saga comes from the recent charge of Fred Hoyle and others that the Archaeopteryx fossil is an outright forgery. Hoyle et al insist that Archaeopteryx could not have flown at all, given its bones and musculature. Archaeopteryx looks like a reptile and was a reptile. As for ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 78: Nov-Dec 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fossil Identity Still Up In The Air In 1986, we reported the discovery of bird-like fossils in Texas by S. Chatterjee, a paleontologist at Texas Technical University. Chatterjee was so certain that the fossils (two specimens exist) were primitive birds that he named the species Protoavis texensis (first bird from Texas). During the past five years, the scientific community has chafed while Chatterjee studied his finds and wrote them up. It seems that many paleontologists do not think that Proto-avis is really a bird at all, and Chatter jee has been slow in releasing details. But now his first paper has appeared in the ... ." (1 ) Just why is there so much fuss over a handful of poorly preserved bones? If Protoavis is really a bird, it places the origin of birds 75 million years earlier and dethrones Archaeopteryx as a tran sitional link between dinosaurs and birds. In fact, Protoavis essentially denies that birds evolved from the dinosaurs. In short, Protoavis could change a limb or two on that Tree of Life you see in all the textbooks. References 1. Anderson, Alun; "Early Bird Threatens Archaeopteryx's Perch," Science, 253:35, 1991. 2. Ostrom, John H.; "The Bird in the Bush," Nature, 353:212, 1991. 3. Monastersky, Richard; "The Lonely Bird," Science News, 140 ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 8: Fall 1979 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Coral Carbon Ratios Confound Chronometry By measuring the carbon-14/carbon-12 ratios in the annual growth bands of coral, scientists hope to spot natural and man-made changes in global chemistry. For example, the large-scale use of fossil fuels should depress the ratio by adding carbon-12 in undue quanti ties. The advent of the nuclear age boosts the ratio through the addition of carbon-14 to the environment. Predictably, the carbon ratio rises dramatical ly after 1950 (the bomb tests, etc.). Before this date, however, anomalies crop up: Coral-ring and tree-ring data differ substantaially when ... should not; Coral-ring carbon ratios from relatively close locales, such as Bermuda (solid line) and the Florida Keys (dashed line), also differ significantly. Item 1 might be due to non-atmospheric carbon upwelling in deep-ocean water; but this would not explain the Bermuda and Florida discrepancies. (Anonymous; "Carbon-14 Variations in Coral," Open Earth, No. 3 p. 30, 1979 Comment. These discrepancies are particularly relevant to the carbon-14 dating of seashells, which often produces wildly incorrect ages. From Science Frontiers #8 , Fall 1979 . 1979-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... , which lived during the time of the dinosaurs, reveal growth rings -- concentric rings where normal bone growth was interrupted, possibly because of seasonal temperature changes. No such rings are found in the bones of modern birds, which maintain their body temperatures metabolically even in cold weather. But growth rings are found in such reptiles as crocodiles, which cannot maintain their temperatures metabolically, and in some fossil dinosaurs." (Browne, Malcolm W.; "Study May Shake Birds Down from the Dinosaur Tree," New York Times, March 17, 1994. Cr. J. Covey.) From Science Frontiers #93, MAY-JUN 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 30: Nov-Dec 1983 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Arctic Womb "Magnetostratigraphic correlation of Eureka Sound Formation in the Canadian High Arctic reveals profound difference between the time of appearance of fossil land plants and vertebrates in the Arctic and in mid-northern latitudes. Latest Cretaceous plant fossils in the Arctic predate mid-latitude occurrences by as much as 18 million years, while typical Eocene vertebrate fossils appear some 2 to 4 million years early." (Hickey, Leo J., et al; "Arctic Terrestrial Biota: Paleomagnetic Evidence of Age Disparity with Mid-Northern Latitudes During the Late Cretaceous and Early Tertiary," Science, 221:1153, 1983.) Comment. The anomaly ... is in the vision of the high Arctic lands basking in the warm sun busily evolving new life forms well in advance of their appearance in lands closer to the Equator. What happened to the earth's axial tilt. These fecund polar territories should have been engulfed in darkness almost half of the year -- hardly an environment for precocious plant evolution. Further, trees found buried in the Arc-tic muck could never have grown where found due to the long polar darkness. From Science Frontiers #30, NOV-DEC 1983 . 1983-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... that those mysterious Cro-Magnons, who seem to have appeared out of nowhere, got to western Europe ahead of schedule. They are probably the artists who made those 31,000-year-old cave paintings at Grotte Chauvet in southern France. Even though of slighter build and smaller brains, the Cro-Magnons are thought to have quickly replaced the Neandertals. Complicating the picture is abundant fossil evidence of so-called "archaic" Homo sapiens in Europe commencing some 500,000 years ago. Did these archaic versions of modern humans evolve into Neandertals before the Cro-Magnons (modern humans) arrived on the scene? Some paleoanthropologists now believe so. Just the other day it was generally thought that Homo erectus rather than "archaic" Homo sapiens gave rise to the Neandertals. ... Hublin, Jean-Jacques; "The First Europeans," Archaeology, 49:36, January/ February 1996) Comment. We, too, are confused. Don't take these human evolutionary family trees too seriously. They change with each new "find," and these seem to come several times each year. Reference. Human evolution, as seen in the fossil record, is covered in section BHE in our catalog: Biological Anomalies: Humans III. Ordering information here . How a Neanderal was pictured in an 1873 issue of Harper's Weekly. No senstive, caring, loquacious man he! From Science Frontiers #104, MAR-APR 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Doubts About Two Ritually Recited Theories Do you think humans originated in Africa? We have heard for so long now that modern humans got their start in Africa. (This assertion is as hackneyed as: "Life began in a warm little pond"!) There is, of course, some evidence for the African claim. Studies of genetic material and the fossil record are suggestive, although the latter includes the Middle East as a possible birthplace. Other data, however, put the "founding group" of modern humans in Southeast Asia. The iconoclast here is C.G . Turner, II, an anthropologist at Arizona State University. He has analyzed secondary dental traits (number of roots, bumps, etc.) of 12,000 individuals ... job. This vivid, riveting scenario has been repeated again and again in the media until it seems to be a fact instead of a theory. "Unfortunately, it seems to have been pure myth. Over the past decade or so, evidence against Marinato's theory has been piling up. Much of it has come from unlikely sources - the Greenland ice sheet, for instance, and trees in California and Ireland. Most of this evidence points to the same conclusion: Whatever precipitated the Minoan collapse, it was porbably not Thera. The volcano seems to have erupted more than a century before Minoan civilization died." Briefly, although the explosion of Thera certainly occurred, it was too early. Further, its tidal waves were greatly exaggerated (really only about 30 feet high instead ...

... weigh in with only 2.2 % irons. Why the marked differences? Could it be age? The Antarctic meteorites seem to be up to a million years old; those of Nullarbor, perhaps 16,000-18,000 years. (Anonymous; "A Meteorite Bounty from Down Under," Sky and Telescope, November 1991.) Comment. Perhaps pertinent is the observation that fossil meteorites are essentially nonexistent in geological formations older than a million years. This is an anomaly of itself! From Science Frontiers #80, MAR-APR 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...